Planning has been a fundamental tool for organizing the development process in many countries. Planning processes played a key role in China’s development, but they are still little discussed in international literature, and practically nonexistent in Brazilian literature. Therefore, this article provides a historical and critical analysis of the Chinese five-year plans
carried out in the period from 1953 to 2020. A qualitative analysis of the main characteristics of each plan was carried out, as well as a discussion of the most important lessons that can be obtained from each plan in light of the planning and public management literature. The main lessons to be learned are: the importance of decentralization in planning, the need for bottom-up dynamics, placing plans as state and government policy, thinking of development as a diversified process, plans and goals following flexibility and incentive strategies and obtaining learning through the trial and error process.